On Being A Man [Poem]

When women talk about the ways they’ve been mistreated, abused and made small at the hands of bad men, we secretly hope they don’t mean us.

We hope they don’t notice the ways we haven’t been perfect.

We are mostly confused about how to give women what they want, and we find ourselves stuck between being too assertive and too much of a pushover.

We are continually stumped by what it means to be a man.

We see the opportunity to speak up about women’s rights but it feels impossible to say something without coming across like we’re pandering for attention from women.

We desperately want attention and approval from women.

We know that one solution to sexual aggression is to shut ourselves off, to not want anything, to be totally passive, but that leads us down a path of self-destruction.

We are confused about what to do with our sexual desires.

We don’t have sexual role models, and the mixed messages we get from movies, religion, family and women leave us totally lost. We know that loving women can be scary, because the stakes are high.

We are afraid of the consequences of loving a woman.

What if women find out that we’ve said things in locker rooms that we weren’t proud of? What if they find out what kind of porn we like, and what if it’s too weird? What if women knew how much we ogle at pictures of them? Is it ok to feel the extent of our desires, even if they might make others uncomfortable?

We just want to be one of the good ones.

And most of the time, we don’t even know what that means.

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